


Of does & butterflies & bluejays

by tropico



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-08 00:16:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4283391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tropico/pseuds/tropico
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's proud of herself when she doesn't cough. </p><p>A collection of moments from Arcadia Bay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of does & butterflies & bluejays

The cricket and cicada's song fills the stuffy room. It's been two whole months since her dad died and that means it's officially summer in Arcadia Bay. It's barely started but it is already brutal – fitting and ominous. The night is warm, overbearing and completely without a breeze so the open windows do little to alleviate the discomfort of the heat. God, it's too fucking hot to be sleeping inside a blanket fort, pressed up against your best friend. 

Chloe sighs loudly – she knows Max is a heavy sleeper, won't wake up for the world – and turns onto her back, looking up at her ceiling. The glow in the dark stars are peeling off one by one and the illuminating moonlight makes them look cheap and childish. She should probably take them down, she's not a baby anymore. Her hair is sweaty and damp and her body is sticky with sweat as she tosses and turns, tries to get comfy on the hard floor. The clock reads 3.35am. Fuck. 

She hates the silence, hates the void it leaves because it makes her think about him. Six feet under her, six feet away from her. Images and cruel, unwanted memories play behind her eyes in the dark. The way he kissed her six times before he went to sleep. The way his voice was warm and sleepy before his morning coffee. The way he wrapped his big, strong arms around her and made her feel so safe. It's the way things should be and the way they will never be again and it makes her chest hurt so fucking badly she can't breathe properly. Her cheeks sting with raw, dried salt and she scrubs at her eyes roughly. 

Fuck it. She clambers onto all fours and backs out of the blanket fort, careful not to step on Max's foot that sticks out from under their sheet. She has to do something, she decides, she can't keep thinking like this. She opens the door to the dark, humid hallway and quietly, so she doesn't wake up her mom, creeps down the stairs. 

The world is deliciously silent in the kitchen. The moon shines through the window and lights up the counters, cluttered and unclean. Her mom hasn't really had the heart to do many chores and Chloe both understands this and resents it. It feels wrong for the world to go on turning, for it to not recognize how her life has been obliterated, but she knows it has to. The school bus has to turn up, she has to get dressed and her mom has to clean up. This is their life now. 

But still, it's hard to adjust. She knows that's why her mom keeps making too many pancakes and leaving them out to rot on plates. Max tries to help eat William's share but there is still a small stack left on the table that makes Chloe want to cry. A couple of small, black flies buzz around them. 

As Chloe looks at the pancakes, she notices a pack of cigarettes underneath a half drunk glass of water. Her mom quit years ago but started back up just recently. They look so neat and uniform in their package, all the same size and width and colour. Crisp white paper and soft brown filter. Simple and existing outside her world of hurt. She slides one out of the box and presses it between her lips, stands up and turns on the stove. Flames flicker out as she adjusts the gas and leans forward, grazing the tip of the cigarette against them. It glows red and she sucks the smoke into her mouth, copying the way she's seen her mother do it. After a moment she inhales it into her lungs and waits. She is proud of herself when she doesn't cough.

The taste of the cigarette is gross really, like burning and dirt. But for some reason it calms her down. Her skin feels cooler and she's distracted from her thoughts by this new grown-up way of breathing. Something about the way the taste lingers in her mouth reminds her of the grave and it makes her feel closer to him. She finishes the cigarette in the kitchen and stabs it out onto the stack of pancakes, silently daring her mother to clean it up in the morning. The world is still quiet.

She slinks back upstairs with the taste of the graveyard in her mouth, curls up next to Max and for the first time in two months, falls straight to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> a collection of moments from arcadia bay... will update as i post more. i just wanted somewhere to put all these little snippets of scenes & stories i've made up in my head.


End file.
